A marketing firm has become the first to be fined £90,000 after plaguing
members of the public with thousands of unwanted calls.

Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, said a further 12 companies were being investigated as he declared the menace of cold-calling would not be tolerated.

More than 2,000 complaints were made over the actions of DM Design, with one victim who wanted to be removed from the firm’s system faced with the threat that staff would “continue to call at more inconvenient times like Sunday lunchtime”.

The penalty is the first to be issued for live marketing calls and comes after two owners of a firm which blitzed members of the public with 840,000 spam texts a day were fined £440,000 last November.

Complaints over the Glasgow-based DM Design, which is run by Donald and Elizabeth Ann Macleod, included one from a vulnerable person with dementia who said they felt pressured by the caller, while others claimed callers lied about their identity and wrongly claimed someone else in the household had given them consent to call.

Mr Graham said the fine “sends out a clear message to the marketing industry that

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“This company showed a clear disregard for the law and a lamentable attitude toward the people whose day they were disturbing,” he said.

“This is not good enough.”

He also pledged that it would not be an “isolated penalty”, saying: “We know other companies are showing a similar disregard for the law and we’ve every intention of

taking further enforcement action against companies that continue to bombard people with unlawful marketing texts and calls”.

Two more companies face “significant penalties” within weeks, and 10 others are “subject to ongoing investigation for cold-calling and sending spam text messages”, the Information Commissioner’s Office said.

John Mitchison, head of the Telephone Preference Service, said he was “delighted” the commission had issued its first fine to a company breaching telemarketing rules.

““The TPS has been urging the ICO for enforcement action against companies operating outside of the law for the last 18 months, so we welcome this action as an important first step to reduce the number of nuisance calls.

“Unsolicited phone calls can be annoying and cause distress to millions of people and it’s the responsibility of the regulators to protect the consumer.

“We hope that the ICO continues to investigate companies that are breaching the law and welcome more enforcement action against other law breakers.”

Last November, Christopher Niebel and Gary McNeish were fined after making hundreds of thousands of pounds from Tetrus Telecoms.

They sent out illegal messages offering compensation for accidents or payouts over payment protection insurance and then sold on the details of those who replied, the ICO said.